Those words still ring true seventeen years later, when another “entire generation has come of age free to assume Roe‘s concept of liberty in defining the capacity of women to act in society, and to make reproductive decisions.”
I’ve felt both nostalgia and trepidation as I imagine what the next few weeks and months will bring. Our new pro-choice President will be called upon to make one of the most momentous decisions of his young presidency. And anti-choice extremists – frustrated that they no longer have a friend in the White House – will gear up and try to tear down any nominee who would respect precedent and protect the right to privacy.
But the pro-choice majority here in Massachusetts and across the nation sent a powerful message last November. And I know that we can send another powerful message to Washington again in support of a Supreme Court nominee who will safeguard privacy and the right to choose.
Progressives from the BMG community have been a tremendous partner in our efforts to protect privacy and respect women’s choices here in the Commonwealth. I look forward to working together in the weeks and months ahead to promote these shared values.
Young women (including myself) have nothing to compare our current state of choice to – having been grown up after the furor of Roe was over and done.
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p>But it is as relevant and important today to fight for reproductive rights as for all other civil rights – we must not get complacent, not even with Obama in the Oval Office.
This I believe is the crucial message here. I tend to be a loose constructionist which means that I think the burden of proof should fall on the side of challenging constitutionality. Frankly, while I am pro-choice on the merits I have a hard time figuring out how the Constitution forbids laws restricting abortions. There may come a time when Roe v. Wade is overturned and we will have to fight entirely on the merits. I can live with that since I believe most states will allow the procedure to some degree. The only really awful outcome would be if the Court went all the way to the opposite extreme and ruled a fetus a person in the meaning of the 14th amendment (which clearly refers to persons “born” or naturalized, NOT “conceived” or naturalized). There are plenty of reasons for women to have the right to decide what to do with her own body, but for better or worse, the Constitution does not appear to be one of them.
…was in that bastion of the free press, Hustler Magazine. Larry Flynt took a tour of the days of back alley abortionists, publishing crime scene and autopsy photos of several women who died horrible deaths in those days. No one should ever have to suffer and die in that manner ever again.
I have empathy for those women. But it’s an aberration to suggest that something one does willingly — regardless of how abhorrent the deed — is done without the exercise of free will and choice while ignoring the individuals who do not have a choice — the father and the child.
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p>At six weeks, the heart is beating.
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p>At ten weeks, the arms and legs, fingers and toes, eyes, nose and mouth are all there.
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p>Abortionists call the baby “tissue” but it doesn’t change the truth. Just because doctors use a vacuum and pliers rather than a coat hanger doesn’t detract from the tragedy.
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p>Abortion choices
First trimester (around 5 to 12 weeks)
* Mifepristone with misoprostol
* Methotrexate with misoprostol
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p>(Experts do not recommend medical abortion after 9 weeks.)
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p> * Manual vacuum aspiration, as early as 5 weeks after the last menstrual period (uses a tube attached to a handheld syringe that draws tissue out of the uterus)
* Machine vacuum aspiration (uses a tube attached to an electric pump that draws all tissue out of the uterus)
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p>Second trimester (13 to 24 weeks)
* None
* Dilation and evacuation (D&E), a combination of vacuum aspiration, forceps, and dilation and curettage (D&C)
* Induction, possibly with D&E, seldom used
In answer to first paragraph: There is no “child” yet.
Of course that is always the question. Your assumed conclusion is as arbitrary as dweir’s, and just as controversial.
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p>The fetus can neither be described as as a person, nor as mere “tissue.” The fairest thing that can be said is that the fetus progresses over approximately 40 weeks from something closer to the latter toward the former. The word “fetus” is employed to mask this ambiguity, but is therefore not useful when it comes to what is necessarily arbitrary line drawing.
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p>It makes no sense to pretend that this isn’t so, as it makes no sense to ignore the impact of all of this on the woman in whom the fetus is growing.
Yes, I was purposely as uncompromising as dweir.
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p>In response, I resisted stepping into Singer territory, but if you want more nuance, why not? So here goes.
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p>Once one begins to ask questions about organisms that feel pain, have beating hearts, display the beginnings of intelligence, and have the potential for cuteness, I begin to wonder about pigs who have all these characteristics. At state fairs, I always make a bee-line to look at pigs.
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p>Look at them. They’re not people, but so cute, so energetic, so intelligent. Why do they get converted into Easter dinner?
I believe we’ve also had an exchange on the Prevention of Possibility Argument which usually runs to “It’s good your mother didn’t choose to have an abortion.” This side-trip into counterfactual territory seems strange to me. The unrealized egg-sperm hookups in this world so outnumber the realized ones that it seems strange to privilege the tiny number of actual conceptions over the inconceivably vast number of potential conceptions.
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p>Anyway, this is all well-traveled territory. Probably only evolution is debated more on the internet.
Too tired on a Friday afternoon anyway.
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p>I was attempting to express resignation: the two sides of this issue perpetually make arguments right past one another, each refusing to engage on anything other than their own rhetorical ground. It isn’t even fair to call it “debate.” It is more like performance art at this point. The only time the pro-lifers mention the effect of an unwanted pregnancy on the mother is when they trot one out for an old fashioned witness testimony, as Sarah Palin did recently. Likewise, the abortion-rights folks won’t stray into territory that acknowledges that the fetus is anything other than “tissue,” kind of like some sort of cyst.
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p>We did have that debate, which was unfinished because I got busy with work and was prevented from spending time here. We may finish it yet: I don’t see why the fact that some, many, or even most zygotes fail spontaneously has any bearing on the decision to affirmatively cause such failure.
are washed out in menses. Nature cares little for fertilized eggs. So, apparently, does anyone’s god. So when you ask here:
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p>
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p>my question back to you would be why do you only value the fertilized eggs women know they are carrying?
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p>It’s the inconsistencies that are problematic here. Fertilized eggs are holy or worthy of “rights” only when we know about them? They are easy enough to detect these days. Why such a cavalier attitude about menstruation? Involuntary terminations? Why aren’t we confining all females who have unprotected sex until their HCG titers are determined and they can be cleared as not containing a “sacred human life”? What about pregnant women? Isn’t the “human life” she is carrying while she is pregnant worth every precaution to save it? Why isn’t she confined to constant monitoring until the sacred “human life” is about 32 weeks? Either the “human life” trumps the mother’s rights or it doesn’t. The fertilized-egg-as-human-life can’t be sacred on a part-time basis for the political convenience of some segment of society, can it?
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p>Katha Pollitt is right when she suggested that if you view the fertilized eggs as a human life, then you better start having funerals for tampons.
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p>The same inconsistencies are found in the “only in the case of rape or incest” argument, which is completely and utterly indefensible. We don’t confer humanity on fertilized eggs based on the nature of their creation, do we? We don’t strip fertilized eggs of their humanity simply because of the behavior of the man, do we? If we can do that, then surely we can find a way to strip the fertilized eggs of its humanity based on something the female did wrong, right?
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p>In order to defend the selective protection of fertilized eggs, one must resort to invoking the inscrutable will of something godlike or the cold, hard reality of biology in action. Consigning the reproductive rights of women to the whims of either is, again, not a defensible position in a civilized society that claims to care something about human rights. In each and every case, when the fertilized-egg-is-human sort of logic is followed to its extremity, it becomes rather clear that what we’re talking about here is not the humanity of fertilized eggs but the desire to control women just up to the point at which flagrant lunacy becomes evident.
You may deal with the issues or not. That’s fine. But you realize, of course, that by responding with your dismissive “performance art” label/metaphor, you could not have proven my point my succinctly short of typing the words, “You are correct, lightiris.”
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p>In reality, you have demonstrated clearly that your implied argument is untenable from either an ethical or biological perspective. Well done.
This could be more interesting if the participants had more time.
I find it impossible to respond to this:
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p>
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p>without violating the rules of the road.
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p>In any event, I have realized that it isn’t worth the time or the emotional energy required to respond, as any such response would merely open up a new round of Political Position Performance, complete with the “anyone who disagrees must only wish to control women” applause line.
Definitions make abortions more palatable or justifiable. It’s an understandable rationalization.
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p>Perhaps your standard is birth. Perhaps it’s 24-week gestation/600 gram viability.
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p>Until then, you may not consider a fetus deserving of rights. You may not consider it a child. You may not consider it human.
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p>But the fact remains, a fetus is alive. And abortion is a violent termination of its life.
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They need not be mutually exclusive. By all means we can state at what point in fetal development this happens or that happens. Whether a certain threshhold merits legal protections is a different question entirely and reasonable people can come to different conclusions based on the same set of facts. My own vote is for out-of-womb viability to be the dividing line. Maybe one day technology will render this debate moot as we can both terminate a pregnancy AND keep the fetus alive outside the womb, even from the earliest stages.
… about life are actually misplaced.
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p>The decision about ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ should be able to be shown as being based on some salient criterion. Life alone can’t be the criterion. All kinds of cells in my body are alive and I’m under no obligation to ‘save them’.
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p>Potentiality can’t be a criteria: although CMD doesn’t “…see why the fact that some, many, or even most zygotes fail spontaneously has any bearing on the decision”, it’s because if potentiality is the criterion it would obligate us to take (extrodinary) measures to ‘save’ potential fetuses that would otherwise “fail spontaneously”. This seems to violate our sense of moral obligations so if potentiality necessitates it and it really shouldn’t be necessitated, then it can’t be the salient criterion.
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p>Viability is more of a gray area. We seem to have ethical instincts that would obligate us to try and save a fetus that was viable,… but the line of viability moves with the advance of medicine. This will be the interesting part of the debate in the future I suspect.
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p>I mentioned ‘misplaced’ earlier. Mike the mad biologist had a post on the issue earlier. He’s not diplomatic about it (for the most part he’s preaching to his own choir), but he is on point. He was reacting to a comment that someone made:
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p>He goes on to explain some theological points that have been asserted about when ensoulment happens by religion and notes that they certainly differ from the ‘life begins’ criterion and are decidedly not post-modern.
FYI, the first block quote was the comment and everything quoted after that is the post in response.
Very interesting comments, Mr Lynne, regarding potentiality, viability, life, and ensoulment. Maybe we should find a day when CMD is not so busy and try to put up carefully organized post on this topic.
That’s an interesting fact that I’ve never heard before, believe it or not. I’ll be sure to look into that further.
and am often heartened by the pragmatic, reasoned writing to the point where I have some hope that this nation can shed some of its superstitious religiosity. Then, I go back to political blogs and find that my optimism is unwarranted.
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p>That said, I read Mike’s blog fairly regularly and love his spunk tremendously. Thanks for putting this up and getting him some exposure. đŸ™‚
“The baby’s moving….”, “Want to feel the baby kick?”, “Is it a boy or a girl?”, etc.
… it’s pretty clear that using the term ‘baby’ or ‘child’ on a fetus or blastocyst is a technical misclassification. The differences are strong enough to need to classify them separately.
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p>Doing so can be a lovely sentiment expressing the aspirations of parenthood, but of course not every pregnant woman has such aspirations,… which is the point.
If everyone was educated about and had access to contraception then unwanted pregnancies would be extremely rare.
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p>NARAL and the pro-choice movement advocate strongly for prevention. Everyone who believes in a woman’s right to choose also believes that abortion should be safe and legal, but rare.
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p>
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p>In the interest of educating woman about alternatives to abortion, you might be interested in spreading the word about the availability of Emergency Contraception.
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p>We can all work together to keep abortion legal and safe, while working hard to promote prevention. A woman’s right to privacy and her right to control her own body are rights that should never be taken away.
it would probably make more sense. : )
Sorry, my editor had the day off.
More here. đŸ™‚
hysterical. Laughed so hard I fell off the cake. I’m sure I’ve been guilty of it myself.
When I learned Justice Souter was retiring, I could imagine klaxons blaring, red lights flashing, and someone pressing a button to bring the hoary warriors on both sides of our cultural divide back from cryogenic freeze to do battle once more. I really wish we could unring the bell my own party first rang in the Bork nomination–that we could stop speaking in code about “activist judges”, the “right to privacy”, and other topics that 99% of people understand without really understanding at all, and in general, that we could de-escalate the nomination process.
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p>I have previously said I think the nominee should come either from the appellate courts or the academy. Can we find someone from either of these worlds who is clearly qualified for the bench but who has not taken a public position on each hot-button issue like abortion? I would love to see a clearly qualified candidate nominated and confirmed whose views on the hot-button issues were unclear. It would be refreshing. Does such a person exist?